PORT HUENEME : Council to Be Asked to Resist Dump Plan

In an effort to halt the expansion of a Santa Clara Valley dump, Fillmore Councilman Roger Campbell will ask the Port Hueneme City Council tonight to oppose a tenfold expansion of the Toland Road Landfill.

Fillmore and Santa Paula officials have lobbied other west county cities for a month, trying to reverse a decision by a county trash agency--on which the cities have representatives--to study the Toland expansion.

“Our choices to fight this project is either through politics or the courts, and right now, it’s politics,” Campbell said. “That’s the only way to stop this project.”

The board of the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, the agency that operates Bailard and Toland landfills, voted 5 to 4 in February to spend $770,000 on an environmental study of the Toland Road Landfill expansion.

Situated midway between Fillmore and Santa Paula, an expanded Toland dump would accept most of the trash that now goes into Bailard, which is set to close in 18 months.

Tonight, Campbell hopes to persuade the Port Hueneme City Council to ask the district board for a second vote on the proposed dump expansion.

The regional sanitation board is made up of a council member from every city in the county, except Simi Valley, and a member representing the unincorporated area.

Only a member on the winning side of the issue can request that an item be brought back for a second vote, said Santa Paula Mayor Alfonso C. Urias, who has been on the district’s board for years.

If Port Hueneme council members agree with Campbell tonight, they could ask the district board, which meets Thursday, to set the issue for another vote.

And at the April 20 meeting, Port Hueneme could carry the swing vote in reversing the board’s previous decision.